Breaking The Circle
by Clare
Summary: One-shot featuring the characters Login and Keara from "Full Circle". Takes place shortly before the Starliner left Alzarius.


****

Breaking The Circle

"Keara?"

The girl sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped in front of her, looked up at the sound of her father's voice. He was standing in the doorway, dressed in the greenish-brown coat which marked his status as a Decider but with a look of fatherly concern on his face. Though his appointment meant he was supposed to break all family ties and treat Keara no differently than he would any other person on the Starliner, Login's daughter was by far the most precious thing in his life. Decider or not, he meant to spend as much time with her as his duties permitted.

"How are you, Keara?" he asked, walking into her room and sitting down beside her. Looking at her closely, he noticed stains on her cheeks, as though she had recently been crying. But he did not mention this out loud, instead waiting for her to reply.

"I'm all right," Keara said. "I was just thinking . . ." Her voice trailed off as she remembered the recent struggle against the Marshmen, creatures which emerged from the marshes of Alzarius only during Mistfall and were driven by some deep instinct to attack the people on the Starliner. She had never seen a Marshman in the flesh until recently, but she had heard people old enough to remember the previous Mistfall speak of them. Not that anyone knew very much; fearful of the supposedly poisonous mists which also appeared at such times, the Alzarians had always retreated to the Starliner at the first sign that Mistfall was imminent.

"About Varsh and Tylos?" Login asked, after Keara hadn't spoken for several seconds.

Keara nodded, painfully aware of the knot of grief inside her. Varsh and Tylos, her fellow Outlers, had been her closest friends, but they had both died at the hands of the Marshmen. She remembered how, on finding Varsh's body, she had removed the belt the youth wore and given it to Adric, Varsh's young brother and his only surviving relative. "You'd better keep this for him," she had told Adric, who had gone off on his own shortly afterwards and hadn't been seen since. She sighed. "I'm going to miss them."

Memories crowded into her mind. She recalled how she, Varsh and Tylos had played together as small children, how Varsh had grown increasingly frustrated with the way the Starliner was run, how he had talked herself and Tylos into leaving. Calling themselves the Outlers, the three friends (and two other teenagers) had spent the last few months living on the fringes of Alzarian society, surviving by their wits. To most people, the Outlers were nothing short of a public nuisance, a gang of juvenile thieves, but all attempts to catch them and bring them back to the Starliner had failed. Until now . . .

* * *

Login looked at his daughter for several seconds. Just for a moment, he imagined that it was twenty-five years ago and the girl sitting next to him was Hanya, his boyhood sweetheart who had grown up to be Keara's mother. But Hanya was long gone; she had died giving birth to her second child. Thanks to their race's innate recuperative abilities, Alzarian women rarely suffered complications in pregnancy, but Hanya had been one of the exceptions. Though she had been perfectly healthy throughout the time she was expecting Keara, this time something had gone wrong. And the birth itself had been so difficult that Pedina (the old woman who acted as the Starliner's midwife) had had to call in Dexeter to assist, something she only did in emergencies. Login remembered pacing outside the room, as he had done when Keara was born, a vigil which had ended when Dexeter emerged bearing the expression of someone about to break bad news. Hanya, Login was told, had lost so much blood that even her Alzarian physiology could not repair the damage and the baby, a boy, had been stillborn.

In her last moments, Hanya had whispered to Login, telling him to take care of Keara; the little girl had been the one thing that kept Login going in the days that followed, giving him a reason to go on living. As the years passed, Keara had grown into a replica of Hanya as a young girl, both female Alzarians having the same flaxen hair. When the Deciders had ordered the Starliner sealed despite knowing that there were people, including Keara, still outside, it had felt to Login as if they were not only condemning Keara, but that he was losing Hanya all over again. By the time he learned that Keara was still alive, Login had already been appointed as a Decider, a vacancy having opened up when Decider Draith failed to return to the Starliner in time. And, once you had accepted the position of Decider, you were in the post for life.

"Any news of Adric?" Keara asked at length. Her question was more an excuse to break the silence than a demonstration of her concern for the boy's welfare. Though she, Varsh and Tylos had tried to include Adric in their childhood games, he had always been more interested in studying mathematics; his late mother, Jendra, had once joked that he could count before he could talk. Keara had never really liked Adric's habit of acting superior and had only tolerated him because he was Varsh's brother. And, when Adric's mathematical skills earned him a place among the Alzarian Elite, it seemed to Keara that he had become more overbearing than ever, constantly wearing the star-shaped badge he had been awarded, constantly drawing attention to the status this gave him. Though her attitude to Adric had thawed somewhat during the Marshmen's attack, Keara knew there was little chance of any close friendship developing between them.

"We've looked everywhere," replied Login. "But he's definitely not on the Starliner . . ." After all, he reflected, there were only so many places a person could be in an enclosed environment like the Starliner. In which case . . .

"The Doctor and Romana?" Keara asked, refering to the two people who had arrived on Alzarius shortly before Mistfall began. Could Adric possibly be with them? It wouldn't surprise her if he was; after all, with Varsh dead, he no longer had any ties on the Starliner.

"Perhaps," Login replied, guessing what Keara was thinking. The Doctor hadn't said anything about taking Adric with him, but it would certainly explain why no-one had been able to find the boy on the Starliner . . . Login recalled his first meeting with the Doctor, who had been hauled before the Deciders along with a young Marshman (which had subsequently been turned over to Dexeter so that he could run tests on it) when a work team caught them inside the Starliner after the doors had been sealed. While being questioned, the Doctor had revealed that the mists were harmless, giving Login hope that Keara might still be alive; the two men had been about to go outside to look for her when a large blue box suddenly materialised in the corridor.

* * *

That large blue box was the Doctor's TARDIS, the machine in which he and Romana travelled. Login had never been inside it himself, but, almost as soon as it appeared, he had been both surprised and relieved to see Keara emerging from it, followed by Varsh, Tylos and Adric. The Doctor had then entered the TARDIS and left the Starliner, taking Adric with him and leaving the Alzarians to deal with the Outlers. All the members of the gang, including the two who had returned to the Starliner when Mistfall began, had been called before the Deciders, charged with betraying the ancient vow made by their supposed ancestors. The vow to make the Starliner operational again and fly it back to its planet of origin, Terradon . . .

Login had been surprised when he, the youngest and most recently appointed of the Deciders, had been asked what should be done with the Outlers. But, in that moment, he had known he could never bring himself to condemn Keara, even though he was forbidden to show any kind of favouritism. The only way round the problem had been to appeal on behalf of all the Outlers, to blame their actions on the impetuousness of youth. To his relief, Decider Nefred (who had been promoted to First Decider after Draith was killed) had agreed with him and none of the Outlers had been punished. Instead, they had simply been put to work helping with repairs.

But the threat from the Marshmen still remained. Romana had been bitten by one of the spiders which also appeared during Mistfall and, under the influence of an alien protein, she let the Marshmen into the Starliner. Login recalled how they had over-run the Great Book Room, where the Deciders and several other Alzarians had been searching the volumes for a way to deal with the menace. In the ensuing struggle, Nefred had been fatally wounded; as he lay dying, he had told his fellow Deciders a secret only he had been permitted to know, that the Alzarians had never been to Terradon.

Nefred had died before he could reveal anything else, but the Doctor had already deduced the truth about the Alzarians, that they were genetically related to the Marshmen. Not long after the Starliner crashed, a group of Marshmen had invaded it, killed the people on board and started using the spacecraft as a den. But the Marshmen were highly adaptable creatures, so much so that living in the Starliner had affected their evolutionary cycle, causing them to evolve into humanoid beings. Login and Garif, the only other Decider to survive the Marshmen's attack, had been repulsed by the idea and, even now, Login still found it hard to believe. Like every Alzarian, he had grown up with the belief that he was of Terradonian descent; the truth about his people's origins was going to take some getting used to.

* * *

"Father?" Keara's voice cut through Login's thoughts. "What's going to happen to us now?" Having seen the Marshmen once, she was not eager for a repeat encounter with the creatures. The memory of Varsh being dragged to his doom by one of the Marshmen, as Adric vainly tried to save him, played back in her mind. Varsh had joined Deciders Draith and Nefred, Dexeter and Tylos as a fatality of the Marshmen's aggression towards all Alzarians; if the Marshmen got into the Starliner a second time . . . She shuddered at the thought.

Login paused for a moment. "I'll have to consult with Decider Garif," he replied. "He's First Decider now - and we'll need to choose a third." As he spoke, he realised that it had only been a matter of hours since he was himself appointed as a Decider; he had not expected to be called on to perform such a duty so soon. Nonetheless, the regulations which governed life in the Starliner required there to be three Deciders, so a choice would have to be made. It would have been easier if the Doctor had accepted the vacant post when it was offered to him, but he had chosen to leave in the TARDIS, taking the now cured Romana (and, it seemed, Adric) with him.

Keara did not ask her father who he had in mind for the post; the Alzarians were not consulted about who should become a Decider unless they were being offered the position themselves. Besides, she would find out soon enough. "And the Marshmen?" she asked instead. "Suppose they come back."

"If they do, we're in trouble," Login said grimly. "The Doctor's trick of flooding the Starliner with oxygen won't work a second time - you know how adaptable the Marshmen are." Purely by chance, the Doctor had discovered that the Marshmen could not adapt quickly enough when exposed to oxygen-rich air, but Login knew enough about the creatures to know that it was only a question of time before they overcame this issue. There was only one answer, he realised; they would have to do as Nefred had wished and leave Alzarius. And there could be little doubt that Garif would have reached the same conclusion.

"Then what _can_ we do?" Keara asked, her eyes clouded with fear.

Login paused for several seconds. "Decider Nefred wanted us to leave, so we'll leave," he told her. He hesitated, wondering how much he should reveal, then continued. "You see, Keara, most of the maintenance work we've been doing wasn't strictly necessary." Generations of Alzarians had grown up with the belief that it was their duty to prepare the Starliner for its journey to Terradon, but, somewhere down the line, they had become caught in an endless cycle of maintenance work, of removing and replacing the same components over and over again. And, had the Doctor not confronted the Deciders about their procrastination, the task would have been passed to Keara's generation, then their children, then their children's children.

"Then the Starliner is ready for take-off," Keara stated. There was no excitement in her voice; she was remembering how Varsh had always said the Starliner was never going to take off. Now, it seemed that it was, but Varsh had not lived to see this moment and neither had Tylos. Both boys were dead; their bodies, along with those of Nefred and Dexeter, had been cremated in a vast incinerator earlier in the day. Adric had not been present at the ceremony and, now that Keara thought about it, she had not seen him since she had given him Varsh's belt.

Login nodded. "It's just a matter of pressing the ignition switch," he told her, recalling how the Doctor and Romana had told the Deciders how to fly the Starliner and had even activated the systems that needed to be activated beforehand. However, the decision of whether or not to press the ignition switch and take off had been left to the Deciders, the most important decision they had ever had to make.

* * *

At length, Login got up from where he had been sitting beside his daughter. "I have to go now, Keara," he told her. "I have my duties to attend to." For a moment, he wished he could stay longer, but he was a Decider now and that meant he had to put the welfare of the community above his personal feelings. From now on, instead of sharing quarters with Keara, he would share the Deciders' Quarters with Garif and whoever was selected to be the third Decider. However, as he left the room, he paused in the doorway. "Are you sure you'll be all right?"

"Yes," Keara said. "Aunt Shyla said I could stay with her as long as I liked." Shyla was Hanya's sister and Keara's closest relative after Login; following Login's appointment as a Decider, she had become responsible for Keara until the girl came of age. Effectively orphaned from the moment Login accepted his post, Keara was grateful she had family willing to take her in. At least she wasn't like Varsh and Adric, who had lost their entire family except each other and had spent the last few years living with a succession of foster families.

And, with Varsh dead, Adric now had no-one. Although, Keara recalled, the two brothers had drifted apart somewhere down the line, especially since Adric earned his badge. And, just when it seemed there was a chance of rebuilding their relationship, Varsh had been killed . . . Keara recalled what Adric had said earlier in the day, that, when the Starliner took off, he would not be on board and nor would he be on Alzarius. The Outlers had openly scoffed at him, but it now appeared that he had been right; his destiny lay not with his fellow Alzarians, but with the Doctor and Romana.

Login gave his daughter a parting smile, then left the room.

* * *

Left alone, Keara removed her Outler belt from around her waist and held it in her hands, as she had seen Adric do with Varsh's belt. The Outlers were finished now; Varsh and Tylos were dead and she had never had the same closeness with the other members of the gang. She sat there, lost in her memories, until Garif's voice came over the Starliner's loudspeakers, distracting her from her thoughts. The new Decider, Garif announced, speaking to his people as First Decider for the first time, would be a man called Terekar. And that wasn't the only announcement Garif had to make; after centuries of seemingly endless (and, as the Doctor had revealed, pointless) maintenance work, the time for the Embarkation had arrived.

Moments later, Keara felt the floor of the Starliner vibrating beneath her feet, as the craft lifted off from the surface of Alzarius, bearing its occupants on a journey to a world they had always thought of as their ancestral home. The circle of procrastination which had delayed the journey for so long was finally broken.


End file.
